GOSSIP
"One Person's Chit-Chat is another Person's Slander"
| Admit it, we are all guilty of it! No matter how interested you are in serious news, every so often the front page of a gossip magazine will catch your attention, and you will find yourself browsing over the list of featured articles, and the bold-faced hollywood names. Most often, you will find an article of interest, and before you know it, you are flipping through the pages of the magazine........Is American society becoming too obsessed and fascinated with the private lives of people? |
| An increasing problem, popping up in companies across the country, is Gossip. Gossip in the workplace is becoming an ongoing battle for supervisors. Companies have started to take drastic measures, setting standards and rules, to cure the problem of tattletales taking over the company. |
| According to some studies, gossip is viewed as a Friendship Builder, especially in the creation of female friendships. Not only is telling secrets evidence of friendship, it actually builds the friendship up to a different level. As described on a pillow in Alice Roosevelt Longworth's home, "If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me." |
| The Statistics. A recent survey on office gossip revealed that those who gossip, know more about what is going on in the organization than those who refrain from it. |
| "Whoever gossips to you, will most likely be a gossip of you." There are eight ways to detect if he or she is a gossiper. |
| As a supervisor, or a friend, you need to be a director. There are ten steps that you can take, in order to defer someone from continuing to gossip. |
Gossip can spring up in your company
or organization for a variety of reasons. The company should care
because, gossip decreases productivity and creation, it distracts people
from their work, it creates dividers between those who work together, it
compromises customer service, and it can cause pain and resentment to people
who are the targets. Gossip consumes much more time at work than
one thinks. In some companies gossip is the single largest decreaser
of productivity.
Tattletale employees are those who
aim for success without any conscience regarding the welfare of other people.
They find satisfaction in spreading rumors about those who are 
becoming
more popular and successful in their endeavors and projects. A tattletale
employee tries to turn stories into realities to gain control over the
work environment and the workers. Supervisors will most often find
ways not to deal with tattlers, and one way is by giving them more assignments,
but this creates the illusion that they are more important, because they
have been given more attention.
Yes, there are plenty of tattletales
amongst the adult population, and they are the supervisors and the co-workers.
They are more times than anything, those who have not made it, but believe
that their turn will come to them only if they bring other people down.
They live by the idea that there is only so much success to go around,
and because only so many people can be successful, a tattletale will spend
long hours trying to get rid of those who they feel that they are in competition
with. Most often, all co-workers are seen as a threat to someone
who gossips. Usually, a tattletale is not a team player, and is not
well liked by all other co-workers. Within the organization, almost
all employees know who the gossiper is and they go to great lengths to
avoid him or her.
When you first meet a tattletale,
they will seem very nice to you, sometimes even too friendly. You
will soon notice, however, that other workers distance themselves from
the gossiper. At first, you might think that the coworkers are mean
to this one person, but after a few months time, you will soon be able
to complete the big picture. Most employees have had past dealings
with this person, and they have learned that they are better off keeping
their distance.
Through time, a constant gossip, will
become more confident. With the sense of confidence growing, so will
the spreading of rumors. The rumors are usually focused upon those
employees who are more successful and more competent. They are usually
those individuals in which most employees look up to, or those who are
well liked within the organization. A gossiper has a talent for seeking
out disgruntled workers, and they manipulate them into their conspiracy
corner.
Create your
own script clearly illustrating the focus, direction and chain of the organization
Make it clear
that constant tattling will not be tolerated
Enforce the
chain of command. If the tattler bypasses their immediate super and
goes directly to you, you are setting a very bad precedent. This
one can come back to haunt you in many ways.
Document the
number of times they come to point the finger and down play others.
Show them at some future date how often they do it.
Help them to
feel successful.
Make them think
and reflect on what it would be like to be in their victim's position.
Help them see
that changes are not threats to them.
Make everyone
aware of their responsibility for perpetuating the rumor and others' reputations.
Bring tattlers
into the group and keep them there.
Find a positive
function for them that is key to group effectiveness.
It is also very important to always remember that, you are an adult, working with other adults. If you respond to childish behavior, you are in a sense encouraging it. Make sure you always listen to both sides, before you formulate an opinion.
As a supervisor, discourage game playing such as win/lose, pointing the finger, and he said/she said. If your organization doesn't have a positive attitude, then your are not all in it together, which leaves the door wide open for the gossips' to be successful. Keep discussions between employees and their supervisors open. The tattlers of your organization will not be at their best when discussions are kept open, because a tattler likes to plant stories and suspicions and then run.
Supervisors who try to stop the spread of office rumors need to make effective decisions when dealing with these type of workplace situations. Supervisors must uncover all the bare facts that led to the gossip. Supervisors can also collect more information by focusing on the important aspects of the situation. It is also important for supervisors to maintain an objective attitude regarding the gossip to successfully reconcile misunderstandings.
Chronic gossipers are most often high maintenance employees. Managers and Supervisors will have to periodically, and possibly quite often, enforce the rules about gossip, teamwork and getting along with their co-workers. If the costs of this effort outweigh the value that the person brings to the organization, then it is probably not worth keeping the employee as a part of the organization. It is important to try and teach these individuals how to manage their emotions and thoughts. It should also be noted that when the most influential people in the organization, like the managers and employees, exemplify proper behavior involved in having a healthy corporate culture, then others will either soon follow or will move on to another environment that resonates with their attitudes.
Managers and Supervisors Must:
Work on the culture
and then work on their own behaviors to remove the root causes of gossip.
Then and only
then can rules against gossip be enforced with success.
Recognize that
those people who still resist participating in a corporate culture of mutual
appreciation may have serious personal problems. It is your call
whether you can manage them, get them help, or get them out.
Attempting steps
2 and 3 before step 1, will lead to frustration, needless turnover of employees,
needless pain to individuals, and lower profits and competitiveness.
All office environments are affected
by the way coworkers communicate with each other. It is important
to make methods of communication positive and to have coworkers design
a useful grapevine of information about each other. A grapevine is
an unofficial communication network that works it way through every organization.
Sometimes it can be positive and sometimes it can be negative. It
is essential to make sure that this grapevine is not dominated by gossip.
A recent survey on office gossip revealed that workers who gossip know more about what is going on in the organization than those who refrain from gossiping. Those participants involved in the survey admitted that they make speculations, but the majority of them said that they only engage in office gossip occasionally. Twenty-one percent admitted that they are frequently involved in gossip, while 14% claimed that they seldom gossiped. They said that the rumors are usually topics that are work related, including business corporate challenges (86%) and office intrigues (79%), and only 57% said that the gossip involves other people's personal lives. Gossip is usually most noticable in a workplace that doesn't have adequate communication channels. According to 57% of those surveyed, the "grapevine" is the only means for them to learn about the things that are going on in the organization.
Why is gossip such a widespread workplace activity? Unfortunately, many organizations don't provide feasible explanations of what is going in.
What Happened the Last Time Your Firm Had A Major Issue
to Communicate to Employees?
7%-Management did a great job of disclosing information
43%-Everyone was kept in the dark, and the rumor
mill spun out of control
50%-Management made a good effort, but employees
still felt confused
The channels of communication in which a firm chooses to use, has a great deal of impact on the amount of gossip that takes place within a workplace. When employees become unsure of what is going, and the tasks being asked them, they will usually become discouraged with the firm, and then gossiping will arise. If the organization chooses to use solid communication channels, where confusion is less likely to take place, then the results will most often be positive. Supervisors need to understand their goals and make sure that their employees are not misinformed. The higher the level of tension, the greater and swifter the gossip. In the majority of cases, stories fly around the office when employees lose faith in administration.
In a recent survey, employees were asked what types of communication channels are most often used within their organization....
71% said that newsletters were the major communication channel used
50% answered that bulletin boards were the popular choice.
43% received information via electronic mail.
36% were involved in routine, company wide meetings.
36% stated the use of memos, and other meetings.
14% felt as though there were no communication channels used.
A simple way for an organization to lessen the amount of gossip, is by simply opening the channels of communication. This will lead to less confusion, which leads to less gossip.
On a more personal level, the survey
then asked the surveyees, if they had ever been hurt by office rumors?
One person said that a rumor about how she handled her department was definite
criticism, but that she had let it blow over. Another employee said
that she was accused of breaking confidence, and it was totally untrue,
but by the time it was proven wrong, the damage to her reputation had already
been done.
Making the Office Grapevine a Positive Tool
The office grapevine, as explained by Elaine Re', president of Re' Associates Inc, which is a communications and human resources consulting firm, can either "...choke the organization or peacefully coexist" ('Care and Feeding of the office grapevine' by Bob Smith), it does however depend on how the organization manages the office's grapevine. Yes, it is quite possible for an office grapevine to be a positive working tool.
In order for the grapevine to be positive, the firm must supervise and limit the personal information as much as possible. The information that is passed should be focused upon office information. Re' says, "Forget about trying to stop the grapevine. It's a natural part of life, and it's healthy because it gives people a chance to vent their feelings." ('Care and feeding of the office grapevine', Bob Smith). Re' goes on to explain that the difference between gossip and the office grapevine is that gossip is solely based upon personal information, whereas the grapevine may have personal information, but also has pertinent office information.
The information involved in the office grapevine is quite accurate. Between, "...90 percent to 93 percent accurate," ('Care and feeding of the office grapevine', Bob Smith). In most cases when the information fails to be accurate, it is usually due to information that has been left out, not from what is put into it. If the company provides its employees with real information, then grapevine will tend not to be pervasive. When employees have all the information, then they will spend less time gossiping and more time working.
"There is no such thing as secrecy
when you're dealing with an office, you should never assume that information
will not travel."---Elaine Re'
"Gossiping Women", by Franciaco De Goya
Eight Ways To Detect a Chronic Gossiper:
Chronic gossipers
will always be able to find something to gossip about. On the average,
a gossiper has a low self-esteem, and by gossiping about others, their
feeling of being powerless decreases.
Gossips look
to gain favor and power for themselves by sharing gossip with others, and
typically they will gain feelings of power by isolating certain individuals,
who become the topic of their gossip.
On the average,
a gossiper lacks the ability to trust. If they do learn to trust
an individual, then it takes a great deal of time, they usually will not
trust someone immediately.
A gossiper
feels the need to play people against one another. This is usually
done through the creation of friendship triangles.
Often times
a gossiper feels the need to divide and conquer groups that already have
an established, trusting, friendship.
Feelings of
chronic rage and resentment will always be evident in a gossiper.
Last, but by
far not least, a chronic gossiper seeks out to have constant affirmation.
According to Dr. Deborah Tannen (1990),
"Telling
what's happening in your life and the lives of those you talk to is a grown-up
version of telling secrets, the essence of girls' and women's friendships."
(p.97).
As Tannen (1990) has pointed out,
an essential part to a friendship, is telling the other person about the
daily going ons of your own life. In doing so, when the listener
responds in the correct way, a friendship will bloom. It will become
natural to tell this other person, about secrets of your own life and the
secrets of someone else's life. It is important to take note that
when one tells the secrets of their life to another, they are giving power
to the other person, because they could, in fact, tell your secrets
to others, which could create trouble for you. (Warner Brothers Has
Released A New Film Titled "Gossip". This film depicts all the dirt,
lies, and scandal that are involved in the creation of a negative rumor.)
To check out a preview of the movie visit: http://www.movies.warnerbros.com/gossip/index.html
It is a type of technique that is
used in order to get closer to someone that they are with. When you
gossip to someone, it will usually bring the listener closer to you.
The news makes the listener trust you enough to tell you more. It
also creates a kind of intimacy between you and the other person.
By talking about one's self and others, it makes them feels as though they
aren't alone in life. If a person doesn't have anyone to tell their
thoughts and impressions to, then they tend to feel all alone. Talking
about a person who is not present is also a way of establishing rapport
with someone that is present. When both individuals agree about the
evaluation of the person, they are both reinforced by their shared beliefs
and views. According to Tannen (1990), this can also be seen as a
way of forging a connection between two individuals.
For further
information on gossip, you can purchase Dr. Deborah Tannen's book, You
Just Don't Understand @ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
Gossip, Good For You?
According to Robin Dunbar (1992), gossip allows us to organize social groups within groups in a more effective way. By exchanging information about those who are not present, we can determine how those individuals who are present will behave and react. It also allows people to teach others how to relate to people that they have never met before, and we can find out a lot of information about how these people behave and what kind of individual they are. This gives people a heads-up when they finally come face to face to with the person. All of these put together will help you to create and organize your social groups.
Do you enjoy Gossip?
Check out these
sites.....
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/celebrity_gossip
In a recent article by Robin Westen (1996), Dr. Ralph Rosnow says, "If people aren't talking about other people, it's a signal that something is wrong--that we feel socially alienated or indifferent." (p.2).
In the same article by Robin Westen (1996), Dr. Jack Levin stated that, "For a real understanding of our social environment, gossip is essential. It's primary function is to help us make social comparisons. For example, if we read bad news about celebrities in the tabloids, or get into the gruesome details of our neighbor's misery over a cup of coffee, our own problems begin to pale in comparison." (p.2).
Conclusion
I seemed to have found a lot of information on the subject of gossiping. Most information and research that has been done, has been on the effects of gossip in the workplace. According to the studies, and the amount of information that I found on this subject, gossiping on the job is becoming an increasing problem and many business are seeking out to end this ancient art of conversing. I found most of the information to be very interesting, and I had never realized just how much information there is available on this subject. A great deal of the information that I came across, was mostly repetitive in the aspect that gossip warps the work environment. Most of the research seems to point to the idea that most gossip occurs in the workplace as a direct stem of poor communication channels within the organization. I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with this, because it seems to me that no matter what a company does to improve their communication channels, there are always going to be disgruntled employees, who have nothing better to do than spread rumors about others and take part in chit-chat about those who are not present. An interesting study to conduct would be to regulate the amount of gossip within an organization, then change the channels of communication, and check to see if the amount of gossip has lessened or increased.
If You Would Like Some More Information On Gossip, Then
Visit These Sites....
http://www.skali.com.my/people/ttn.php?article=6
http://web6.infortrac.galegroup.com..._53_0_A13995176?sw_aep=umaine_main
http://home.sprynet.com/~jbrutlag/gossip.htm
Resources
http://web6.infotrac.galegroup.com..._30_0_A18440952?sw_aep=umaine_main
http:...?purl=rc1_BIM_0_A19768179&dyn=34!xrn_2_0_A19768179?sw_aep=umaine_main
htt...?purl=rcl_BIM_0_A16374006&dyn=24!xrn_21_0_A16374006?sw_aep=umaine_mai
http://web6.infortrac.galegroup.com/itw?...6/836/57215734w3/20!mltview&amk_1_2_3_4
http://web6.infortrac.galegroup.com..._35_0_A17949623?sw_aep=umaine_main
http://...purl=rcl_BIM_0_A8570695&dyn=24!xrn_27_0_A8570695?sw_aep=umaine_mai
http://web6.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/...6/836/57215734w3/20!mltview&amk_1_2_3_4
http://www.skali.com.my/people/ttn.php?article=6
Nofsinger, R.E. (1991). Everyday Conversation. California: Sage Publications, Inc.
Tannen, D. Ph.D. (1990). You Just Don't Understand. New York: Ballantine Books.